


Goodbye

by sxetia



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: AU, Angst, F/F, Fix-it fic, Gen, Healing, Trauma, What-If, aerti real, bury your gays, but at what cost, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:13:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23632909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxetia/pseuds/sxetia
Summary: One last moment with her.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart & Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart/Aerith Gainsborough
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	Goodbye

_What do I feel?_

Like always, Tifa’s thoughts self-perpetuated the fallacy that feeling them intensely enough would be able to compensate for leaving them unvoiced. If she didn’t talk about it, then nobody else would be concerned with it, and if not a single soul else cared then why would Tifa have any reason to? It was an easy, simple way to dismiss the consternation within her and forget that it existed, intangible intricacies floating in the void until they dissipated away. 

She existed only in the third person, invisible when left alone. Tifa has never known a loneliness stronger than those moments, which trickled by slowly like blood soaking pink fabric. 

_Tell me what to feel. Tell me. Please._

Her silence mattered not, eyes wide and fists trembling. The only audience she wanted and _needed_ was now a corpse, unable to listen or make sense of what she felt, and her tears wrote out all she felt on her face. The sounds of others attempting to cope and rationalize their sorrow echoed all around the bowels of the Forgotten City, furthering Tifa’s descent into desolate confusion. Nanaki’s mournful howling blended in with the desperate, youthful bawls of Yufi, while Barret’s struggles to console Cloud blended wordlessly with Cid’s struggle to keep his composure. 

Tifa did not sob. She did not speak. She did not think. All that she was capable of was staring, longing, searching through her memories for an answer or a legend with which to make sense of the emptiness within. She leapt from one fragmented piece of the past to another, each happy recollection only serving to push Tifa further down the spiral. 

Reverse order, one at a time, basking in the wonderful gray of their relationship: Tifa was too reserved and unsure of herself to make her feelings known, whereas Aerith was far too coy and playful to make a move herself: she would coax and tease it out of Tifa one little flirt at a time. 

Their final night together, sharing a bed in an inn, Aerith’s slumbering head cradled against Tifa’s chest while the latter lied awake, thinking about what it was like to have a future to fight for. Aerith stealing a kiss in the midst of the rush of the Golden Saucer, Tifa left breathless and Aerith a giggling mess. A particular campsite dialogue from shortly after they had left Midgar, both of them having ruminated and bonded over the mutual familiarity of isolation and abandonment. Their first time meeting within the slums, and how Aerith’s natural flame lit up the shrouded composure of Tifa’s demeanor... 

Now she was alone again. How could Tifa make sense of it when the person she had always talked to about loneliness, about _everything_ , was dead? 

One step. Two steps. A voice, faintly registered as Cloud’s, croaking from behind her. “Tifa, don’t...” 

How could she not?

She took a knee and stared at her angel’s serene face, that omnipresent smile faintly visible even in death. Tifa no longer saw any beauty in it, simply a faint reminder of what had been taken away. 

Aerith’s hair was a mess; her ribbon and the braid it kept at bay having come undone during her fall. She had always _hated_ it when her hair was a mess, unruly and impossible to consistently tame as it was... Gloved hands reached out to brush brown locks aside, their frayed ends washed in their owner’s blood. Tifa couldn’t draw her fingers away, and instead she let them graze against Aerith’s cheek and cradle her chin. So soft, still so warm... 

Cloud took a knee beside her and moved his hands towards Aerith’s body, only to be halted by Tifa’s palm against the flat of his torso. He shot her a confused, hurt look, only to have it entirely deflected by the brokenness in Tifa’s eyes. She did not speak, but hoped that she could communicate simply by _feeling._

_I do not need you to save me from this anymore. This is something I will face on my own._

And for once, perhaps the first time, Cloud understood. 

He leaned back and placed both hands on a knee, watching as Tifa worked through her grief. Maybe he could find some strength in what he perceived as her own; she was being stalwart and strong as ever... right? 

Tifa slipped an arm underneath Aerith’s legs and another under her back and stood, cradling her just like she had on their final night together. Aerith’s blood seeped out of the hole in her back and stained Tifa’s white shirt, the same shade of crimson as her eyes. 

“...gonna take care of you, ‘kay...? Gonna keep you safe...”

* * *

The waters beneath the city of the Cetra had likely remained still for centuries, millennia before the White Materia had plunged into its depths and broken the tension that had persisted without end. Tifa felt unwelcome. It was perverse for her to step foot in the home of the Ancients, now especially that they were extinct — much less to wade in the waters that gave them life. 

Still; she wouldn’t dare allow anybody else to lay Aerith to rest. It would be the last moment she had with the one she loved. 

_Love._ That was it, wasn’t it? Tifa loved Aerith, had loved her all along, and was too conflicted to realize it... much less tell her. 

She waded, carried her baby until she could feel the drop-off grow steep and the banks of the lake begin to drop off beneath her feet. The water reached her elbows and soaked the back of Aerith’s clothes, and her hair floated against the surface as it was submerged. 

The finality of it all suffocated her. This was the end — no, the end had passed long ago. Tifa had always feared being left behind and forgotten, but now she would leave Aerith behind, wouldn’t she? 

But she would not forget. 

Her arms lifted Aerith up to hold close as she could, squeezed her, felt the heat leave her body...

“Goodbye,” she whispered into her love’s ear. “I love you.” 

Tifa let go. 

Aerith drifted away and sank beneath the surface, the pinks and reds and browns of her silhouette sinking and disappearing beneath a vast expanse of deep teal water. Soon she was gone, leaving Tifa alone again. 

But she wasn’t alone, was she...? 

If the Lifestream was the lifeblood of the Planet and the souls within, then that meant all of those who fell before her were counting on her. The souls of her parents, of all those who perished under Shinra’s tyranny, and of those who had been crushed under the fall of the Plate... 

The soul of Aerith, too. 

She would keep on. She would press forward for a dream of a world where nobody else would have to suffer like she did, or become so familiar with death and loss. A world where her strife wouldn’t be necessary. 

And, perhaps, when her time came she too would join the Lifestream, where she could be reunited with Aerith and nothing could ever separate them.

**Author's Note:**

> me and my girlfriend have said for ages that Tifa should have been the one to put Aerith in the water and, well, here you go.


End file.
